The prior art includes various designs for concealed emergency lighting fixtures, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,025,349; 5,682,131; and 6,097,279 to Gow; U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,788 to Gemmel; U.S. Pat. No. 5,851,061 to Hegarty; U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,065 to Minter; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,371,621 to Le Bel et al. Most of these patents refer only to the module for the emergency heads (lamps) and disclose designs for completely concealing the emergency heads in an open wall or ceiling. They provide minimal disclosure relating to the installation of the complete system, i.e., the rechargeable batteries, charging electrical circuitry, etc. The prior art designs generally include a metal “back box” for housing all of the equipment. Due to its large size, the back box cannot be installed through the wall cutout for the emergency heads and must be installed in the wall before the wall covering (e.g., wallboard) is attached to the studs.
Many of the emergency lighting fixtures in the prior art designs contain only the emergency lights and use a remote emergency power source that can provide power for one or more lighting fixtures. Thus, these designs do not provide an independent, self-powered, battery back-up emergency lighting unit. Accordingly, there is a need for emergency lighting equipment that includes the emergency lights (lamp assembly) and the power supply circuitry and is designed so that all of the components can be installed through a relatively small cutout in the wall or ceiling.